“Pity somebody from the governing body can’t see them,” she thought, as she kept a watchful eye on running somersaults over a two-foot rope. “But, there! You’d have to see what they were like this time last term to get any idea of what’s happened.”
She blew a whistle, and the four teams formed file and stood still. Briefly and clearly she explained a new game they were to play. The girls ran to their places. The game began, and picked up speed. The girls were laughing and happy; their play was accurate and bold. They took risks, and the risks came off. There was a first-class exhibition of swift, clean, neat-handed passing.
She blew her whistle; breathed the form; dismissed it; sat on the edge of the platform to wait for the next class to come. Her thoughts, as at all times now when she was not completely occupied, turned again to that bathroom in which she had seen the dead child. She flicked her head nervously, as though to flick away the vision. She supposed that in time she would get over the shock, and forget it. She forced her thoughts, as she had been doing for a week, away from the subject and on to something more pleasant. She wished she could afford to give up her job at the convent; ten shillings a day was all they paid her; five shillings for the half-day; charwoman’s wages. She knew they would double the pay if she said the word. They had to have a qualified person to take the physical training. Amateurs at the job were inefficient and dangerous. The Community could not, however tiny their income, afford to lose Miss Bonnet for the sake of a little more pay. But she would not say the word. She liked to think that she could not. It was a fancy of hers, a vanity, she pretended to the Kelsorrow staff, to go to them for half-pay. Besides, she had hoped to get a testimonial out of them later on; one from Kelsorrow, too. That other unlucky business—she flicked that away as well. It seemed as though there was no clear, happy course for her wandering thoughts to take; death, ignominious dismissal—the one had been a shock, the other still rankled. It was not as though they could prove that she had done wrong. The evidence of children ought not to be accepted against adults, she felt, especially in a case of lost property. Their answers had been suggested to them, and by the headmaster, too! Mixed schools were the devilt anyway. She hated giving P.T. lessons to girls who were taught their academic subjects by men. Dismissal or a court case! What a choice!
Naturally, she had chosen to go. They could not have proved her guilt—she knew that perfectly well—but other things might have come up. That was the worst of having no testimonials to show except her college one. Lucky to have got to Kelsorrow, she supposed, even in a temporary capacity. Her appointment had never been confirmed. They could dismiss her without notice, she supposed. She wished she were independent of a job, and could please herself what she did. She supposed she would take up golf. There was good publicity in golf. She had a pretty good handicap, as it was, when she played only during week-ends and at holiday times. With practice and regular coaching, and money to spend, she believed she could be very good. It was a game one could play for years; not like these team games—hockey, lacrosse—not like swimming or rowing —in which, speaking generally, one was not much good after twenty-four or so…
She jumped down to take the next form who were trickling into the gymnasium, dancing up and down to warm up, as she had taught them; long-legged girls in shorts and thin white blouses; nothing on their feet but socks and rubber shoes; nothing in their heads, when first she took them over, but cinemas, boys and dodging compulsory games… She looked them over complacently. Good stuff now. She cracked out an order. Nice to give up the military style of command, out of date, really, nowadays, but until one was certain of these girls… Thank goodness none of them looked in the least like the dead, pink-faced child in the bath. It had been like a tinted waxwork, that still, dead face; like the Little Mermaid, asleep, or the angel, that troubled the waters, drowned in them after all. ( 4 )
Wednesday
Mrs. Maslin sat straight and looked at Mr. Grogan.
“I couldn’t contest it?” she said. Mr. Grogan shook his head. He was a good-looking man whom a judge’s wig would have suited. He screwed the top on his fountain-pen and slightly pulled in his lips as though the task were a ticklish one, and he not sure of success. Then he laid the pen down between the open pages of a book and opened a box of cigarettes.
“You smoke?” he said. Mrs. Maslin took a cigarette and tapped it exasperatedly upon the enamelled lid of the flap-jack from which she had powdered her nose some three minutes previously.
“I can’t understand it,” she said. Mr. Grogan, who had always regarded Mrs. Bennett’s remarks about the entail as giving a very fair view of women’s general incapability of grasping even the less abstruse points of testamentary law, shook his fine head sympathetically.
“Well, there it is,” he said. He smiled, and made a joke. “You would have to prove that the young lady murdered her cousin before you could justly claim the estate for your stepdaughter, my dear lady.”
Mrs. Maslin went home very thoughtful. As soon as dinner was over, and the servants had cleared, and coffee was on the table, she said to her husband:
“I’ve been thinking about the death of poor little Ursula.”
“Seen Grogan this afternoon?”
“Well, yes, I did see him. He wasn’t particularly helpful.”
“Well, face the facts, my dear. How could he be?”
“Percival,” said Mrs. Maslin, laying down her coffee spoon and speaking with great distinctness, “do you think there’s anything at all in Grogan’s suspicion that Ulrica killed her little cousin?”
“Good Lord, no! Why, Nessa, what a terrible idea! Damn’ silly, too. Surely Grogan couldn’t have said such a thing?”
“Didn’t he, though? And, you know, there might be something in it! A most extraordinary girl!”
“What nonsense, my dear! Face the facts! The girl’s got religion. You told me so yourself.”
“I know, and that’s just what I mean.”
“Look here, Nessa,” said Mr. Maslin, for once asserting himself, “I don’t believe it, and I won’t have you suggest it. Grogan must be mad. I’d as soon believe you killed the child yourself!” ( 5 )
Thursday
To say that Mrs. Waterhouse loved her work would be not so much to contradict facts as to avoid them. Her work was a refuge, and she buried herself in it much as an ostrich will bury its head in sand. But it had always been understood, except by the victims themselves, that primary school teachers loved their work, and Mrs. Waterhouse, far from being irritated by the assertion (which had been made in her hearing by her former headmistress and by various committee members, as they were called), fostered it. It gave her, in the eyes of those who supervised and employed her, a palpable raison d‘être which she felt she was the safer for possessing.
The truth was that she neither loved nor hated her work; she merely did it. To her it was a job, like other jobs; a good deal more tiresome, perhaps, and a little better paid (not at the convent, certainly, but in the old days, before her marriage) than other jobs she might have got, but a job, nevertheless; not a vocation, a hobby, a life-work or a missionary enterprise; merely a job, and one that she did very well.
When Mrs. Bradley discovered Mrs. Waterhouse— on the Thursday, the day following that upon which she had dined with the school—it was turned ten minutes past twelve, and Mrs. Waterhouse was in the middle of a weltering democracy of four- and five-year-old children, some of them orphans, some of them of noble and one of royal blood. She was taking (like and unlike Miss Bonnet) a physical training lesson. Little mats were laid upon the netball court, but the children had abandoned these, and, when Mrs. Bradley first saw them, were fiendishly scrumming for a small light football, of the kind known as a handball. All were shrieking their heads off.